


Five Ticks to Midnight

by Missy



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4755290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Newt and Hermann met (and saved most of humanity, incidentally).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Ticks to Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/gifts).



Newt is sitting under four inches of plaster and two feet of insulation. 

His roommate calls it as disaster, a fire waiting to happen, and the bane of his existence alternately. Newt ignores the guy on a daily basis; maybe someday he’ll be able to recognize genius when he sees it, when it slaps him across the face. Newt grumbles about the interference – he’s trying to change the world here, trying to safeguard the world while understanding Kaijus. If a little mustard or a solid retaining wall was lost in the process then it was a sacrifice he didn’t mind making. They could repair the room when his grant came through; in the meantime he probably just figured out how to communicate with Kaijus through clever application of what actually worked, injuries and anger and pissed off roommates be damned.

If the application of those skills needed a little more work, then he’d give it that, torking his skills until he finally unlocked the box and solved the puzzle plaguing his mind.

*** 

Newt found Herman in a Value Mart parking garage. They were both searching the digital caulkboard installed in the lobby for those looking for reliable shelter in the post-Shatterdome world, and just happened to pick the same place. The rent was reasonable, and there was room enough to get a lab going that might land them some kind of government funding someday.

For Herman, the arrangement was clearly purely professional; he needed to arrange for the safety of his research and he wanted someplace secure. Newt had the government clearance and the money. This was all he needed to know, the only motivation he needed to make him say yes.

*** 

The partnership wasn’t a difficult one to start out. The arguments were more of the ‘who moved the easel?’ variety, versus ‘who erased ten years of my research from the memory bank to make room for another thesis on Kaiju mating habits’?’ How they ended up sharing a workspace without strangling one another Herman wasn’t entirely sure. He’d come from much calmer place academically, a world filled with doctors absorbed with quiet study and calm work. Newt did not believe in quiet; he barely believed in politeness. Newt believed in disorganized chaos, and he seemed to revel in it. Empty cups of ramen mounted up around his chair as he charted the life cycle of the kaiju; Herman learned to ignore the clutter as he valiantly ignored the His research moved along apace, without seemingly applying much care, thought or interest.

Their shared space was filled with plastic models and digital scans, coffee-scented empty mugs and upturned old Chinese food takeout containers. It smelled like old leather, sweat and bourbon (and, to Herman’s disgust, a vague note of marijuana that no open window could cure), and the internal temperature sometimes rose far beyond what either of them could stand. They hung on to their little space, kept working, kept researching. 

Then the jaegers rose once more to protect humanity from the invading monsters. Then, the world changed for them both. Then, they became important – to the resistance and to each other.

*** 

They argued for hours when Newt declared his desire to drift with a kaiju. For science, of course; to understand them better, of course. Not because of his vague obsession For every reason Herman suggested Newt deflected, and every time he tried to divert the man’s imagination Newt would return to the very same idea: if he could figure out what the kaiju was thinking he could control it, or even better preserve it and yet stop it from attacking humankind. Newt was fascinated, in a word – captivated by what he couldn’t touch. It made Herman feel helpless, sent him in pursuit of the man’s ‘off’ switch.

The words come unbidden to him one night, like a lyric, or a secret spell. Don’t go. I need you here. No one else knows how to shut off the coffee maker. No one else is smart enough to use airfreshner after they use the combiner. No one else gets me, puts up with me, understands me.

But Newt loves Kaiju more than he loves life, more than he loves himself. And when he melds himself with the the beast, getting the info he needs, saving the world with a wave of his hand and a winning stubbornness, Hermann sinks into censureship and relief, handing out towels and handshakes with equal feeling.

*** 

The silence afterward is full but deep, and touched with ragged and unexpressed hope. One shifts a cup of coffee across the shared desks. Another suggests that a walk might be the best idea.  
*** 

The world inside the shatterdome rings with brassy, foolish celebration. Two men walk together in the darkness, fingertips brushing, eyes blurred under the glitter of the neon sky.

Nothing is said, but nothing really needs to be said on a night like this one.

**** 

A few weeks after the victory they’re packing up to move to a fancier office. Newt has major plans to bring about some sort of revolution, bring about a new way of understanding Kaijus. Hermman is more concerned with keeping his own research intact, with planning the future of the experiments, to saving the entire spectrum of humanity.

But in the between, with piles of boxes around them and plans in their minds, they sit in the middle of the mess and wonder what things will be like, in another places.

*** 

There is a ticker-tape parade in the center of the Dome when they find Mako and Raleigh, safe and sound, in the middle of the ocean. And in the middle of those blue, gold, green and red streamers there are two happy scientists, holding hands openly. 

And eventually, two scientists kissing.

And that’s how the world changed. It’s pure chemistry 101 - a reaction for everything, to everything, bouncing and spinning through the centerfuge of life. Love is like that – and nothing like that – and that’s what made it real.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you had fun reading this one, and that I managed to do justice to the pairing of your dreams!


End file.
